Rally Opatija 2016 – review

Rally Opatija, the second round of Croatian Rally Championship, brought a very long and strong entry list with a many Italian, Austrian, German, Hungarian, Slovenian and other crews.

Home crews weren’t strong enought, just three crews were in Top 30. They were also without any class win (Hideg is from Hungary and he driving with Croatian licence). Puskadi was fourth with R5 racing car.
Di Benedetto was the leader of Day 1 with Peugeot 207 S2000 but retaired on SS3.

Hideg was the winner with really amazing driving through all stages, he won 5/8 stages and was the winner also in Mitropa Cup. Also Šebalj an Kossler were really pushed with driving on the limit and got podium in overall classification.

There was fight also with 2WD cars. Zanon, who doesn’t have nice memories from last year on this event, was second – after Turk and ahead Premrl. Eighth was Humar, who come in Opatija for more testing with his Peugeot 208 R2.

There was a really nice conditions for drivers and for spectators on all stages until it was started
raining before SS6, which one was cancelled. Some stages was also pre cancelled because of some accidents so drivers with higher numbers didn’t raced enought.
But on the end – nice stages and awesome starting list were a big plus on this event.